Instruments, Collections and Museums, 1700-1900
Professor Jim Bennett and Dr Stephen Johnston, Museum of the History of Science
Email: jim.bennett@mhs.ox.ac.uk / stephen.johnston@mhs.ox.ac.uk
Hilary Term (Weeks 7-8) and Trinity Term (Weeks 1-4)
This course is based in the Museum of the History of Science and deals with the roles played by instruments over a range of developments in the 18th and 19th centuries. Some are professional, such as instruments of surveying and navigation, but a major theme will be the role of experimental instruments in natural philosophy, chemistry and astronomy.
A reading list will accompany each topic. The following titles are generally relevant to the course:
Pamela Smith and Paula Findlen, eds, Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe
Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain
Jan Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760-1820
Times will be arranged to suit everyone concerned at the first session on Wednesday 29 February, 10 am, Education Room, Museum of the History of Science (come down the outside staircase and through the glass doors in front of the Museum at basement level).
Session 1: 18th-century natural philosophy
Development of a public practice of natural philosophy, supported by the activities of instrument makers through shops, lectures and publication
Sessions 2 and 3: the practice of chemistry
Public culture and the chemical revolution
Session 4: an economy of accuracy in astronomy
Clocks and astronomical instruments
Session 5: navigation and surveying
Measurement in navigation
Longitude and chronometers
Session 6: optical instruments
Refractors and achromatisation, reflectors and their manufacture; microscopes, spectroscopes and the new astronomy
Session 7: the life sciences
Instruments and graphic method in physiology and psychology
Session 8: museums in the industrial age
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List of History of Science, Medicine and Technology Advanced Papers |